One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function.

However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more.

thank you for your article on Linux Calculators. I like HP calculators and I'm pleasently surprised that Nonpareil is mentioned. There are perhaps too many HP calculator emulators too mention them all, but another project that IMHO really deserves attention is Free42 ( http://thomasokken.com/free42/ ), which is an emulation of the HP42s. I think it is noteworthy because:
- active development, GPLv2
- runs on a lot of platforms, including Linux, Zaurus, maemo (and my Palm...)
- skins
- starts quickly, low memory usage
The precompiled binaries (I use the GTK version) ran on my Debian without problems.